D&D 5E alternatives to Nature domain?

schnee

First Post
As for the overlapping between Nature Clerics and Druids, I am afraid this is just one of many typical narrative overlappings in fantasy settings... if it bothers you, just remember that you can work on both the Cleric and Druid side of the problem. For instance, with the advent of 5e and its elimination of the arcane/divine distinction, I have been shifting the concept of Druids away from "priests of nature" and towards "nature wizards".

I treat it like politics. (No, I am NOT talking specific parties here. Chill and see where I'm going with this.)

Nature Clerics are the 'moderates', who live inside the city, worship in buildings, utilize all of modern technology and niceties. They see nature as one expression or facet of a transcendent divine force that is the source of it all.

Druids are the 'radicals', who live and worship surrounded by nature, use un-processed and more primitive things, and live a more rugged life. They see nature as the primal, authentic reality that all other forces descend from.

I imagine the Nature Clerics think of the Druids as misguided escapists, and Druids think of the Nature Clerics as hypocritical sellouts. They have a frosty, but professional relationship in public but really work against each other behind the scenes. Total frenemies.
 

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thethain

First Post
Nature Cleric vs Circle of Land Druid: I am comparing the features gained at the levels against one another. I am merely doing a direct comparison, for your balancing sake you may want to assign a point value, such that having 1 skill might be +1 for cleric, but having such a wider array of prepared spells might be +2 for druid.

Skills: CLERIC : Nature cleric gets 3 skills from class vs druids 2.
Domain vs Land Spells : DRUID : Druid wins here, as it has far more various options.
Heavy Armor Proficiency vs Natural Recovery : DRUID : Having 1 more AC is nice, however compared to getting to cast more spells, well... that is kinda your job.
Cantrips: CLERIC: Cleric wins it has 4 total cantrips vs 3 and one can be from an alternate class list.
Turn vs Wildshape: CLERIC: I am giving an edge to Turn, as in specific combat situations it can completely change an encounter, however non-combat wildshape has extremely powerful uses such as accessing almost anywhere. (most fortifications are designed to prevent people from breaching them, not tiny regular house spiders). If you never end up fighting beasts, plants or undead, turn is worthless, where I cannot imagine a campaign in which wildshape wouldn't save the day at some point.
Dampen Elements vs Lands Stride: CLERIC : While Land's stride is almost certainly overlooked in power by many, the fact dampen elements is such a strong feature gives advantage to clerics. You will have a creature hit by a fireball at some point, cutting that damage in half is really useful. It doesn't even have a limit to uses per day, and gives the cleric a reaction to throw into his action economy. Compare it to "Absorb Elements", its very similar to a first level spell slot, except rather than providing a somewhat small damage buff, it can be cast on other people, and doesn't cost a spell slot, and isn't a spell so can't be countered or affected by silence.
Divine Strike vs Wildshape Improvement : UNKNOWN: Divine strike is a bit of a red herring. You probably are using a 1 handed simple weapon, so at best you are looking at 1d6+1d8 +2/3 from str/dex. Casters should usually use cantrips as they make use of their primary stat, instead of secondary or more likely tertiary one. If you picked up produce flame from the druid cantrip, and sacred flame from cleric, either of those is almost always going to be better than a melee swing. Wildshape improvement allows you to explore underwater environments uninhibited. Both are really only useful in edge cases.
Divine Intervention vs Nature’s Ward : DRUID : Divine intervention is really cool flavor ability, however in practice you are spending an action for a 1/10 chance of something to happen. Being immune to poison will help you at some point, Using your action to do nothing when your party is in a desperate situation may cause a TPK.
Destroy Undead vs Nature's Sanctuary: CLERIC : You have actually already gotten some destroy before this point, the nature of bounded accuracy means that even low level mooks could potentially be a threat, however if they are turned there isn't much difference in that and destroyed in most situations as you should be able to account for them in 10 rounds. That said a level 14 ability that protects you from beast attacks is not impressive. At level 14 you really probably aren't dealing with beasts very often. So Edge to cleric.
Master of Nature vs Timeless Body : CLERIC : I don't think master of nature will really come up much, if 14th level beasts weren't really a concern, at 17th they should be distant memories. However the fact Timeless body is purely a fluff ability in something like 99.99999% campaigns, Master obviously beats it, even if its not an impressive skill at this level.
Divine Intervention vs Archdruid : CLERIC: Finally a blowout. Archdruid is possibly the singular most overpowered ability in the game.... if you are a circle of the moon druid being unable to die unless they can burn through an elemental AND your HP before your turn hits makes a Moon druid capable of standing toe to toe with almost anything in the game, and have a decent chance of winning. But we are talking about a Land druid, not a Moon druid. This capstone just lets them scout more, and replaces the need to carry a 10gp stick. Vs the cleric ability to do almost anything he could imagine, once a week.


So on the whole, I saw more cleric wins, 7 vs 3. However how much you value each comparison will affect your judgement, also many of the abilities come up late. If you don't expect your campaign to go past 10th level, then comparing 14th level features isn't really needed.

Also it is worth noting: A Nature cleric is a cleric who most likely follows a nature aligned deity, typically in some sort of civilized area. A druid is more directly connected to nature and the primordial forces, and may live in the wilderness itself.
 

GlassJaw

Hero
I wonder if the Druid might get some rethinking similar to the Ranger?

It might be the Nature Cleric ends up the spellcaster Druid.

From a high-level design standpoint, this is basically where I started. The more I think about it, it's my preferred resolution:

Use the druid as a base, remove wild shape, add the Nature domain (without heavy armor).

Now the question is whether that's enough. Cleric has turn undead, heavy armor, and a domain. Since the Nature domain is a replacement for wild shape, the druid may need to keep the Circle of the Land path. My gut says that feels ok...
 

Xeviat

Hero
If you don't mind me asking here, how? I'm curious.

I haven't played a Nature Cleric so I don't have direct experience of any imbalance.

I’d be happy to. It’s not huge, but it feels really bad at first level to me.

At first level, a nature cleric gets:
Heavy Armor and shields
2 skills from Cleric list, 1 from nature, animal handling, or survival
3 Cleric cantrips, 1 Druid cantrip

Druid gets:
Medium armor, shields, and a metal restriction
2 skills from the Druid list, and herbalism kit
2 cantrips from the Druid list
Druidic language

Their spell selection is different, but comparable.

At second, clerics get channel divinity and Druids get wild shape. Land Druids get extra spell slots per day. They seem pretty comparable from here out, except that the Cleric has that little jump start of more stuff.

So, it’s minor, but the Druid is lacking at first level I think.



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Xeviat

Hero
Nature Cleric vs Circle of Land Druid: I am comparing the features gained at the levels against one another. I am merely doing a direct comparison, for your balancing sake you may want to assign a point value, such that having 1 skill might be +1 for cleric, but having such a wider array of prepared spells might be +2 for druid.

(... Snip ...)

Divine Strike vs Wildshape Improvement : UNKNOWN: Divine strike is a bit of a red herring. You probably are using a 1 handed simple weapon, so at best you are looking at 1d6+1d8 +2/3 from str/dex. Casters should usually use cantrips as they make use of their primary stat, instead of secondary or more likely tertiary one. If you picked up produce flame from the druid cantrip, and sacred flame from cleric, either of those is almost always going to be better than a melee swing. Wildshape improvement allows you to explore underwater environments uninhibited. Both are really only useful in edge cases.

Both the nature Cleric and the Druid are likely to have Shillelagh, so they will be attacking with their Wisdom. Divine Strike then is like 1d8+5+1d8, and the elemental type is variable, so it can often be doubled and will rarely be halved or ignored. Divine Strike is doing more than other cantrips at this point, and then is mostly even with them at level 11+ when coupled with Shillelagh.

I like your comparison, though. It does show that the Druid is missing something. It’s not much. Another proficient skill, maybe moving some of the land Druid abilities to the base Druid and then giving them new abilities based on their land would be a good start.


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Kobold Stew

Last Guy in the Airlock
Supporter
For those looking for a non-wildshaping Druid, you might want to look at this variant from the 3.x SRD:

Druid
The druid might choose to give up her wild shape ability in exchange for becoming a swift and deadly hunter.

Gain
Bonus to Armor Class when unarmored (as monk, including Wisdom bonus to AC), fast movement (as monk), favored enemy (as ranger), swift tracker (as ranger), Track feat (as ranger).

Lose
Armor and shield proficiency, wild shape (all versions).

I've always liked this -- a distinct flavour that could be ported to 5e pretty easily.

One further advantage of the Nature cleric is its Single Attribute Dependency -- with Shillelagh, both spell casting and melee combat can be keyed off of Wisdom; that's an advantage as measured against other clerics, though.

(And melee is assumed, with the heavy armour proficiency).
 

schnee

First Post
I’d be happy to. It’s not huge, but it feels really bad at first level to me.

At first level, a nature cleric gets:
...
Druid gets:
...

So, it’s minor, but the Druid is lacking at first level I think.

Oh, I thought you had a fix in mind, that's what I was asking for.

I personally don't compare them to a Cleric straight on; IMO they're somewhere between a Cleric, Wizard, and Rogue. Their spell list splits the difference between Cleric and Wizard, their AC is closer to Wizard, their weaponry is closer to Cleric, and due to Wild Shape, they have a whole grab-bag of skill buffs and extra abilities that make them incredibly useful skill characters.

So, depending on what facet you're talking about, it's more or less relevant that they're different from the Cleric. I think all the things you can accomplish in Wild Shape more than make up for the missing skill, and the Moon Druid's ability to dump STR and DEX and soak damage is functionally equivalent to heavy armor.

The one part that seems a bummer is a Druid's cantrips at high levels. Their damage and range are significantly lower than anyone else's. I'm not sure their spell selection makes up for it.
 

Horwath

Legend
My temptation has always been just not to give Heavy armour proficiency to the Life and Nature domains, and call it good. That's the way I've played clerics (I just choose not to use heavy armour), but I've never enforced it on other players.

Life cleric is only viable combat healer, where healing spells more or less justify spell slot and action in combat. And they need to be in the thick of things with melee characters so heavy armor is a must for them.

Nature is dumb and I like it more that instead of picking one out of 3 skills offered as bonus, you get all 3 "nature oriented" skills: animal handling, nature and survival. Instead of heavy armor.
 

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